Identifying Black Oak (Quercus velutina)

[WDH]

Black oak is in the red oak group.

Black oak is the jester of oaks.  It easily fools people with its different looks.  The lower leaves can be blobly and mis-shapen.  To add to the difficulty, the lower shade leaves and the upper sun leaves look completely different.  If I see a mal-formed hard-to-describe oak leaf that doesn't look like anything in the book, it is likely black oak! 

The key Characteristics:

[/list]The young leaves are very hairy, especially the leaf stalk (called a petiole).  There will also be tufts of hairs on the underside of the leaf where the secondary leaf veins meet the mid-rib (the main vein running up the length of the leaf viewed from the underside).

The lower leaves that grow in the shade are variable in shape.  They can be irregularly lobed or hardly lobed at all.  The indentations between the lobes on the lower leaves will be very shallow.  They can be almost oval, or they can be widest at the top end of the leaf.  This shallowly lobed lower shade leaf is distinctive for black oak where there are upper leaves in the crown called sun leaves that are a different shape.

The sun leaves (those at the top of the crown that receive full sunlight) are smaller and  different from the lower shade leaves.  The leaf lobes are sharp-pointed with bristly tips.  The depths of the indentations between the lobes (called a sinus) is relatively deep toward the midrib.
 
Black oak bark is distinctly furrowed and is primarily dark and black in color.  This dark color holds true most of the way up the stem. 

There is no silver streaking or other distinct pattern to the bark.  It is fairly homogeneous and dark in color.

Another distinctive characteristic of black oak is that the inner bark is bright yellow or yellow orange, distinguishing it from the other oaks, whose inner bark is more bland.

Black Oak Bark:
 


Notice the bark is dark in color and has dark ridges that run up the tree.

Also note the yellow inner bark if exposed by a saw cut or a knife (photo courtesy of Phorester).



Black oak leaves:
Shade Leaves with shallow lobes.
More shade leaves.


More deeply lobed sun leaves.

Comparing Sun leaves to Shade leaves.

[Gary_C]

One of the best ways I know to learn what a Black Oak looks like is to buy some thinking they are Red Oaks and then saw them up. You will not forget what they look like after that experience. 

They are not all bad and the ones in your pictures look better than most we have here, but some can be downright crappy.

[scgargoyle]

Yeppers- I definitely found leaves like that on my property as well. I'm 2 fer 2.

[WDH]

Gary_C,

The black oaks down here get as big as the other red oaks.  The grade is not as good as the best of the red oaks like northern red oak, cherrybark oak, and shumard oak.  But, if on a good site, it can make a decent tree with good grade. 

[Gary_C]

Yes, in Minnesota the Black Oaks are every bit as big as the Red Oaks. But the problem is they are such a crap shoot when you go to saw them, you sure need to know when you buy them if indeed they are Black Oaks.

Even on DNR timber sales the foresters are sometimes not good about listing them separately. So if you are bidding on a lump sum sale, you either need to cruise the entire sale yourself, or expect to end up in a dispute at the end over the Black Oaks because log buyers can spot them or they will not have a job very long. And the log buyers have nothing but the log to look at, no leaves, twigs, or tree form.

An older local sawyer, now retired, told me a long time ago that I'd better be able to tell the difference between a Black Oak and a Red Oak or I would get scruit. 

[Ron Wenrich]

When I was scaling timber, I had no problem figuring out the oaks, either in tree or log form.  We would also scale each species of oak separately.  Red oak, scarlet oak, black oak, pin oak, chestnut oak and white oak were common.  Swamp chestnut and swamp white oak were rare.

In general, oaks growing on a good site will yield good quality lumber.  Some species will have more defect due to growth habits.  Its mainly due to how well the species self prunes.

As you get on poorer sites or drier sites, the quality of oak drops and can drop dramatically.  Still, I've seen foresters give a quality rating of excellent or better than average for this type of stumpage.  Buyer beware.

We sell black oak for veneer or export sawlogs.  When I was a procurement forester, I had little problem picking out quality.  The only problems that can't be seen is mineral.  The way the bark looks can give a really good idea what the log looks like inside. 

[WDH]

I don't have the milling experience you have Ron.  Is there any way to predict mineral streaking from the outward bark characteristics?

Gary_C, I have been cautioned about using terms that are too technical.  I think scruit fits that bill.  Way too technical for most on this Forum .

[DanG]

I just figgered scruit was some sort of snack food they had up there, sorta like you would have a Moon Pie and a RC Cola down here.

This is a great series of threads!   I'm getting a lot of things cleared up, but that's making me think of more questions.

Is there a noticable difference in the color of the lumber from Black Oak vs Red Oak?  The reason I ask is, I've gotten the occasional log that I assumed to be RO but the lumber had a dingy brown hue rather than the rich reddish color I usually see.  Would it likely be species or growing conditions that causes that?  I was assuming growing conditions(poor soil) as the pines from the same site were very small for their age.

Isn't there a Southern Red Oak, or is it just a Northern growing in the South?

DanG
Voice of the Ignorant

[WDH]

DanG,

Site will impact color.  Some of the lower grade oaks like Blackjack Oak (Quercus marylandica) look naturally brown to me, so it might be that one or one of the other scrub red oaks like bluejack oak (Quercus pumila) , which occurs in your area (although it don't get too awfully big).  Or, it might be just a "brown" red oak to keep us confused .

Yes, there is a Southern Red Oak.  It can be a very nice tree, and it grows to considerable size.  In GA (just up the line on the better side of you ), it is the second largest state champion, second to live oak as far as the oaks go. 

In fact, Southern Red Oak, and Northern Red oak ( the KING!!) are very different in bark, leaves, and acorns!!

I guess we will just have to do a post on Southern Red oak (Quercus falcata) now that you brought it up, won't we.....................(Just give a tree nut an excuse  ).

Stay tuned .

[DanG]

Yeah, the wood was colored a lot like Blackjack, but the bark was definitely more like Red or Black.  I have a couple more logs from there but they've been down for several months.  Would it be too late for the pocket knife test?

I'll be settin' right here waitin' for that Red Oak thread.

[WDH]

I don't know about the pocket knife test since I know Black Oak live not dead .  The yellow might have faded by now, I am just not sure................. 

[DanG]

I guess if it's yellow it is black, but if it's brown we won't know what color it is, eh?

[WDH]

This tree ID thing is wonderfully confusing, isn't it .  Makes life interesting..............

[DanG]

If anybody reads that last post I made without reading the rest of the thread, they gonna think I lost my last marble.

[WDH]

Yep, totally marbles lost .

[DanG]

Kinda reminds me of that old Folk song about the political musical group;  The one on the right was on the left and the one in the middle was on the right.  The one on the left was in the middle, and the one in the rear......................was a Methodist.

[Ron Wenrich]

Mineral streak is caused by a bacteria, from my understanding.  There are no signs of it from the outside.  When you find it in one tree, you'll find it in a lot more.  I see it mainly in black oak, but you can also see it red oak.  Sometimes its streaks, sometimes its through the whole log.

The lumber does look different.  Red oak is a brighter pink in most cases.  Black oak has that dingy look to it.  The brown heart can be in either red or black.  I believe that may also be caused by bacteria.  I heard that when white oak has a pink texture, that is caused by bacteria. 

Before oak starts to rot, you'll find that the color has changed.  There will be border areas where the color goes from the pink to a brownish color.  Rot is close by.

[Gary_C]

Sorry for the "too technical" term, but it actually is pretty non technical since it came from an old business saying that was something like "scrutinize before you get scrut." I guess I added one too many letters. 

So much of the Black Oak I have seen is bacterially infected and is not easy to see before you start sawing. You will see a darker brown appearance in the boards. I usually test the boards by dropping them on the deck and if all or part of it crumbles, it gets trashed. The last one I tried to finish sawing made such a mess underneath the saw that I had to stop and clean up. So when I see a Black Oak log, unless it is top quality, it gets sent to the firewood pile.

Yes, you could say I have a bias against Black Oak. If I see a sale with significant quantities of Black Oak, I will not even go look. That is probably why the foresters around here do not like to separate small quantities of Black Oak.

[WDH]

I had the honor of visiting Tcsmpsi's place this morning, and low and behold (in Texas no less), there was a prototype black oak.  I took a pic, and when I can download the pics, I will post it. 

It seems that further north and west of the range of black oak that you go, the poorer the form and the poorer the wood quality.  Further east and south, it can be a pretty good tree.  (Of course, all the southerh oaks are supposed to be trash, so how can this be ?).

That is something (the range thing) that I did not know.  As somebody said, you learn something new every day .

[OneWithWood]

I have some mighty fine black oak growing on my property here in the northern part of the southern part of Indiana.